Britain's first black woman headteacher

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Yvonne Conolly was made headteacher of Ringcross Primary school in North London in 1969. She had moved to the UK from Jamaica just a few years earlier and quickly worked her way up the teaching profession. She faced racist threats when she first took up the post but refused to allow them to define her relationship with the children she taught. She spoke to Jonathan Coates about her life.

Photo: Yvonne Conolly in a classroom. Copyright: Pathe.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. This is the Witness History Podcasts from the BBC World Service.
0:45.0	And all this week we are bringing you programs from our archives about events in British Black History from recent decades.
0:51.0	Today we're going back to 1969 when a young Jamaican became the first
0:56.3	black woman to be made head teacher of a British school. Jonathan Coates reports.
1:00.9	When a Von Connolly took up her post as head teacher of Ringcross Primary School in North London,
1:06.3	the British media made quite a fuss.
1:08.3	There's no colour problem at Ring Cross Infant School.
1:11.8	Mrs. Yvonne Connolly has to be thanked for that.
1:14.0	But there's an awful lot of love, most of it for her.
1:18.0	The school was inundated by quite a number of newspapers who came to take photographs, journalists who asked silly questions,
1:29.0	particularly of the children, the school was actually turned upside down for the few days.
1:35.1	She's London's first West Indian head teacher and what a hit she is with the kids.
1:40.1	All 200 of them. The journalists ask silly questions. Is your headteacher, kind headteacher? Yes. Do you like her? Yes. nobody got to the mark of racism, but inherent in some of the questions,
1:59.6	coiled in some of the questions, and was almost to the point of you have got a black head teacher.
2:06.4	And outside the media spotlight,
2:08.6	Yvonne Connolly was facing a hostile reaction from some people.
2:12.4	When I was appointed as head teacher,
	...

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